


Lamented and Assured

by APgeeksout



Series: Merrier All the Time(stamps) [1]
Category: World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Stitches, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-20
Updated: 2017-02-20
Packaged: 2018-09-25 16:04:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9827891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/APgeeksout/pseuds/APgeeksout
Summary: June 16, 2009; Roman, taking care of Dean in whatever way he can on the day of his mother's funeral.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in the same AU continuity as [Merrier All The Time](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7566340) and takes place a few years beforehand. (To follow this without having read that, you'd need to know: Dean and Roman have been extremely close friends since junior high, Dean is scratching out a career for himself wrestling increasingly grisly matches as Jon Moxley, and Roman became a nurse after an injury derailed his sports career in college.)
> 
> Also, a belated cover for the "taking care of somebody" square on my card for round 7 amnesty in h/c bingo on lj.

"You're sure you don't want to have some kind of lunch back at the house?" Mama asked, curling her fingers under the lapel of Dean's suit jacket. "It really isn't any trouble."

"I'm okay, Doc," he said, and leaned down to wrap her in a hug. "Really. You've done way more than enough already."

Mama seemed ready to protest that, but Pop stepped forward to put his arms around them both. He dug his fingers tight into the back of Dean's neck for a beat, and when he stepped back he brought Mama along with him, tucked into his side. He gave a sad smile over the top of her head, and Roman took it as his cue.

"I got him, Mama," he offered, coming up to stand beside Dean, the shoulders of their coats just brushing. "We've got it handled."

“Okay, okay,” she agreed, clearly recognizing when she'd been outnumbered, even if she wasn't quite finished mothering yet. "Call if you need anything," she added, even as she allowed Pop to lead her back toward the van where Lydia was getting all of her kids buckled in. Everyone in attendance at the graveside service had been a Reigns, apart from the minister and a pair of quiet women who said they'd worked at the hotel with LeeAnn (and Dean, though that was only by technicality, since he was family in every way besides the name on his birth certificate).

Roman followed Dean's lead away from the casket and its small pile of lilac sprigs – the only flower that Dean had been sure that she liked when Mama asked about the arrangements – back toward Pop's car.

"I don't need a babysitter, you know," Dean grumbled, but there was no real heat in it, and he was already slouching into shotgun as he spoke.

"Maybe not," Roman said as he settled behind the wheel, "but you've got a friend. Whatever you need, I'm here."

Dean looked away at that, his gaze landing somewhere in the treeline at the far edge of the cemetery, and tugged at the collar of the white dress shirt. His obvious discomfort with both the sentiment and the borrowed suit squeezed at Roman's heart while he watched Dean fidget loose the knot of his tie.

"Be my designated driver?" Dean eventually added, producing a shiny flask and a tired half-smile.

"Any time," he agreed. "Buckle up."

Dean snorted and mumbled something about _safety first_ before he reached for his seatbelt.

* * *

For a while, they really did just drive around, winding through neighborhoods that were pretty drowsy in the early afternoon space between lunchtime and rush hour, the windows down to let in the warm breeze and let out the smoke of Dean's cigarettes. Between puffs, Dean nursed his flask and drummed his fingers against the door frame in an irregular rhythm, slithered out of the suit jacket and rolled his shirtsleeves up past his elbows and didn't chatter into the quiet that fell between them.

"Could you eat?" Roman asked after a while, letting their route drift gradually closer to downtown, delis and diners and dive bars appearing in the storefronts they rolled past.

"Maybe. Could definitely do with a refill," he said, tapping at the flask where it rested in the pocket over his heart.

The place Roman picked was new: bright and glossy, part of a chain with a menu full of appetizers with cutesy names and a big family section. Not the kind of place LeeAnn might have spent some of her rougher nights. Not the kind of place where Dean might know which of the staff could sell him something a little stronger than whiskey to take the edge off.

Probably Dean would be pissed if he realized that that was the thought process that had led them to this place, with Katy Perry loud on the jukebox and a waitress who'd disappeared to find a manager to ask whether she was allowed to leave the bottle. Maybe he'd take a swing. Maybe it'd do him some good. Wasn't like Roman couldn't take it. Probably could take a punch easier than Dean's hundred-yard stare through the trivia-game place mat.

Roman ordered about half the starters menu, on the theory that between nachos and potato skins and soft pretzels and cheese sticks and fried shrimp and chicken wings, Dean might put something solid in his stomach.

"How you doing?" he asked, eventually, breaking the heavy silence that had settled around Dean.

Dean lifted red eyes up from the doughy pretzel he was dissecting on his plate and gave an eloquent shrug. “I'll let you know when I figure it out,” he offered.

“Sounds fair.”

“Fair.” Dean scoffed. He paused to tear savagely into a chicken wing. When he'd stripped the bones, he continued. “Think that's part of what's fucking me up.” He heaved a sigh and discarded the bare bones, trading them for his drink, spinning the cloudy glass between his fingers. “She was really starting to do okay for herself, you know? Like, she'd been clean for almost two years this time, and she told me they just gave her a raise at work. She'd made a couple of friends who weren't trying to bring her down – those ladies that were there today? That was them, I guess – and she was finally going to talk to your old man about cleaning up her criminal record.” He sighed again, and swirled the liquid in his glass. “And now that's all wiped out. Don't know why I think life ought to pick now to be fair, but it pisses me off that this isn't.” He tossed back the last measure of his whiskey, then gave a bleak, crooked smile that Roman hurt just looking at. “Sorry you asked yet?”

“Wouldn't have asked if I didn't want to know,” he said thickly, fried cheese turning to concrete in his belly. “Lay it on me.”

Dean's face threatened to crumple up at that, but the waitress returned just then with chit-chat about dessert and the check, and by the time Roman caught his eye again, he'd had the chance to pull himself back together.

“Take me by her place?” he asked softly.

“You know I will.” Roman busied himself counting out the bills to cover the check and the tip one-handed while the other wrapped hard around Dean's wrist: the less-dramatic substitute for his first impulse to drag him across the tabletop and into his arms. “Told you, babe, whatever you need.”

“Gonna make you regret saying shit like that one of these days,” Dean groused, though his face was soft and he hadn't jerked out of Roman's grasp yet.

“Try me.”

* * *

LeeAnn's apartment was small, but nice: clean and bright, with windows that looked out over a cheery brick church building across the street, its sidewalks bright with pre-schoolers' chalk drawings. There was a stack of moving boxes piled on and around the coffee table, left from when Mama and Pop had come by the other day to clean out the fridge and take the non-perishables to the food pantry.

“Your folks are too good to me,” Dean said, eyeing the pile warily. “I should've been the one to take care of all this.”

“Mama likes to stay busy when something's going down.” Roman shrugged. “If you hadn't had to wait to fly in, she'd have spent all that energy fussing over you instead.”

Dean barked a quiet laugh. “And now that I'm here, you've taken over her job. What's she gonna do about that?”

“Remind me that it wouldn't be right to smack you for being mouthy when you've got all this other shit going on?”

Dean smiled half a smile and checked his shoulder before he stepped forward to lift a flap on one of the top boxes. “Smart lady.”

“You ever been here before?” Roman asked, watching his face as he peered into the box, which had been labeled Misc. Personal Items in Pop's neat block lettering.

“Once,” he said, nodding. “Dropped in on her on the way back from that gig in Nashville last fall. Couch is pretty comfortable. I think she liked it here. She was happy, maybe.” He pulled a couple of CDs from the box and held them up: Johnny Cash. “She was shit at picking guys, but she always had great taste in music.”

Dean fell quiet for a little bit, sifting through the box. He fanned through a stack of magazines and hefted a glass paperweight with a swirl of bright colors in the center, turning it over thoughtfully in his palm. When he opened the lid of a little enameled box, his mouth ticked into a small smile, and he turned it toward Roman to reveal the blizzard of fortune cookie slips tucked carefully inside.

“Gonna get a couple shots in you and add “in bed” to all of these later,” he said.

“If that's what you want,” he returned mildly.

“Well, they _are_ my legacy, after all.”

The quiet fell easy between them again, and Roman let it rest. Dean didn't need any help, but he seemed glad enough for the company – occasionally pausing to hold up a knick-knack or a half-finished craft and offer silent commentary in the form of a puzzled look – and Roman stood back and let him do his thing.

Then, Dean drew in a sharp breath, his knuckles going white on the hand that gripped the edge of the box.

“Dean? What is it?” Roman asked, not waiting for an answer before he moved to his side to peer down into the box with him.

He'd unearthed a handful of picture frames. One held a shot from their high school graduation: Roman posing obediently - if cheesily - for the long line of assorted relatives' cameras, one arm slung over Dean's shoulders; Dean smiling crooked and almost bashful, even as his hand had snaked up to put a set of bunny-ears behind Roman's mortarboard. Mama had the same print hanging in her office on campus.

The one beside it held a solo shot of Dean from a couple years back, his chin tipped defiantly up at the camera, the hair that fell in waves toward his shoulders glowing a bright and unnatural pink.

The one clutched in Dean's hand was a polaroid, faded, and bent at one corner, not quite the right size for the frame it had been tucked into. In it, Dean was maybe three or four, and grinning, face all dimples and giant blue eyes; at the top of the frame, a sliver of LeeAnn's profile was visible where she'd leaned down to press a kiss into the soft, unruly curls at the crown of his head.

Dean let the frame fall back into the box and backed up a couple of steps to drop unceremoniously onto the couch, drawing in a long, slow breath.

"Been waiting for that call for years, man - fuck, since we were kids - but I never thought it'd be a car accident, you know?” He made a fist and bounced it erratically against his thigh. “I guess I always figured it'd be something I could be pissed at her for. Some shitty idea she had or somebody else's shitty idea she decided to go along with. This is just, like, wrong place, wrong time. I don't know what to do with that."

Roman sat down on the next cushion and cautiously palmed Dean's clenched fist. “You do whatever feels ok, I guess. There's no rules for this.” He shrugged and reeled him, unresisting, into a hug. “And if there were, you'd just break 'em anyway.”

Dean chuckled and rested his head against his shoulder. “What can I say?” he asked, voice muffled in the space between them. “People love a rebel.”

“Yeah, we do.”

* * *

The house was dark when they rolled back in: Mama and Pop tied up at a fundraising dinner at the school; Lyd back at her own place with the kids. Life going on without LeeAnn Ambrose.

“Take all this in?” Dean asked, tipping his head toward the boxes in the hatch.

“It'll keep. Unless you want some more of it to look through tonight?”

Dean shook his head. “Nah. Think I'm all done being responsible for the day.”

“That's my boy.” Roman smiled softly and dropped an arm around his shoulders to steer him toward the house.

Inside, they both retreated almost instantly to their overnight bags for a costume change.

After nearly two years at the clinic, pretty much living in his scrubs, wearing a suit again had him feeling weird: overly formal and out of his element. He tugged a white tanktop down over his head and traded his black slacks for faded blue scrubs and felt a little more at home already. He hoped Dean would rest a little easier in his streetclothes, too, even if the collared shirt and stiff dress shoes were the least of his discomfort. He was just thinking about going to check on Dean in the guest room Mama had made up for him down the hall – being accused of hovering would be easier to deal with than thinking about his boy hurting alone when he didn't have to be – when he appeared in the doorway in jeans and a well-loved Reds shirt, rapping his knuckles on the wood trim before he came in.

He plopped onto the edge of the bed next to him and shoved his hands back through his hair with a growl.

“Anything I can do?”

Dean's face scrunched up in thought before he finally offered, “Let me suck your dick or something.”

Roman laughed, the sound catching in his throat startled and awkward.

"'m serious, dude,” Dean said, warming to the topic. “You been good to me all day. Lemme return the favor."

"Dean, you don't owe me favors for caring about you. You know it's never been like that with us," he said, reluctantly leaving for another day the argument that it shouldn't be that way for Dean with anybody.

"Yeah, yeah. You wouldn't be turning this down if you knew how good I've gotten at giving head." Dean gave him a leer, and he couldn't help but laugh again. "I mean it," Dean continued. "We ain't all cut out for nursing school, you know. S'good to have a marketable skill if this whole wrestling thing doesn't pan out for me."

"You're such an asshole. Stop talking about my friend like that."

Dean slumped over a little, bumping their shoulders together. "Yeah, all right." He sighed and picked at a hole in the knee of his jeans. "For real, though, I'm not bullshitting that it'd help. Like, if we were doing that, then my head'd be full of you for a little bit, instead of...” He paused and gestured helplessly before he finished, “... all this other shit."

He let Dean rest against his shoulder and watched his fingers worry the hole in his jeans bigger. He thought about all the hard ways Dean had found to get out of his own head over the years and how many times he'd wanted to break his fall, and he came to a decision: if Dean needed to use something tonight, let it be him.

"So, you need a distraction?"

"Something else to focus on, yeah," Dean said, cocking his head to look over at him cautiously, waiting, like always, for the other shoe to drop.

The urge to wipe that look off his face burned away whatever indecision and awkwardness Roman was holding onto, and he reached up to push a shock of curls back from Dean's temple, carding fingers back through his hair until he was cradling his head. “Got you covered,” he said, smiling gently at Dean's surprised expression before he leaned in to press a kiss to his mouth.

The whiskey was heavy on Dean's breath - gotta get some water in him before he crashes, he thought, a little giddily - and Roman could taste its afterburn on his tongue and in the shaky sigh that Dean let go of when he leaned into his embrace.

After the first kiss, he let Dean take the lead – take what he needed from him. When Dean nudged him back toward the mattress, he let himself fall back and wait for Dean to straddle his middle and settle over him. He never stopped touching him, but he let Dean set the pace, let him pull away when it was too much and dive back in when it wasn't enough. He pressed kisses to every part of him that Dean let come into range – mouth, cheek, stubbled jawline, the silver hoop in his ear, the soft spot at the base of his throat, the knuckles of the hand that spread out warm and callused over his own shoulder to stroke along the lines of his tattoo – but he didn't chase or push when Dean flinched away from his softness. He wanted to shore him up, not break him down.

After a while, Dean straightened over him and shrugged out of his t-shirt, casting it over the side of the bed with a small, sudden smile. Roman rubbed a palm over the solid thigh tucked next to his own hip and felt his heart clench at the unexpectedly peaceful look on Dean's face. When Dean bowed down to collect another kiss, he skimmed a hand up the line of his back, and this time it was Roman who flinched.

For as long as he'd known him, Dean's skin had never been unblemished. Even as a kid, he'd carried the faint marks of things he claimed not to remember (and that Roman had come to accept he wouldn't talk about, whether that was the whole truth or not), and over the years he'd added the nicks of hundreds of tacks and shards of glass and other bullshit he shouldn't be letting make holes in him. Still, none of those old wounds should have been rough and prickling under his palm.

"What -- Dean? Are these stitches?" he asked, shifting to try to catch a look.

"Glad to see that degree paying off," Dean said, deadpan and muffled by the pillow, where he'd flopped over onto the mattress, wisely not even trying to resist letting Roman check him over.

It had been a stupid question; it was obviously a line of stitches - a dozen or so - holding together a slightly curved slice along the wing of Dean's shoulder blade.

"Okay, smartass, what are they from?"

"No Ropes," Dean said, and the piece of his face visible to Roman contorted into a grimace.

"You mean a 'No Ropes, _Barbed Wire_ ' match?" he ground out. The certainty of Dean shutting down on him was the only thing holding back a lecture on blood-borne illnesses and Dean giving a shit about himself.

“Yeah,” Dean agreed softly. “Not as bad as you're thinking, probably. Like, they had a legit medic there and all.”

He followed the arc of the cut with his fingertips, and Dean shivered. “How long have these been in?”

“Two weeks?”

“You asking or telling?”

Dean chuckled. “Was two weeks, Saturday.”

“Whoever put these in tell you when they ought to come out?”

“I'd've done it myself if I could reach 'em. Meant to see if somebody could take a look at 'em at the show this weekend, but then...”

Then, he'd gotten the call about LeeAnn and made his way back to town and forgotten all about taking care of himself. Roman could chew him out, or take care of him himself; no chance Dean would sit still for both. He smoothed his hand down the hollow of his spine – light and easy, despite the strong urge to give him a shake – and looked carefully over the planes and angles of his back, cataloging all the smaller, shallower cuts littered over the skin there, pink but already healing up.

“Lucky break I've got a private nurse, huh?” Dean asked. “That something you could do? Since you're gonna be fussing anyway?”

At the clinic, he'd only have removed sutures on the say-so of one of the docs, but he knew how to do it hygienically, and who knew whether that was true of whoever Dean might go to next? Mama's first aid kit was still pretty hefty, full of leftovers from the post-op routine for his knee. There would be supplies enough to deal with it in the bathroom just up the hall.

“Yeah, probably.” Another stroke up Dean's back. “If I see anything that looks like infection or the cut reopening, you're going straight to the walk-in clinic, though; no argument.”

“Fair enough. Maybe we can negotiate about a sponge bath later.”

He snorted and ruffled through Dean's hair, a touch softer than his talk. “Take the damn hose to you if you're not careful."

* * *

It wasn't a perfect set-up – sterile supplies and disinfected tools arranged on the empty nightstand, the desk chair pulled up to the edge of the bed where Dean sprawled on his belly, hugging a pillow under his right side to put his shoulder at a good angle for Roman to see and reach – but it'd do.

"I know you were kidding about the sponge bath –"

"Was I?" Dean craned his head up from the pillow to give him a good-natured leer.

He snickered and dipped a rag into the bowl of hot, soapy water on the night table and carried on, "– but I am going to clean up the area before I do anything." He pressed the cloth gently to Dean's skin along the length of the cut, looking closely for redness or swelling. The stitches did look better than he'd feared they would.

A few droplets of water trickled down Dean's back, and Roman swept the rag over his skin to soak them up, then returned to the cut with a swab of alcohol.

“Cold,” Dean grumbled.

“Yeah, well, you're tough. I think you can take it.”

“Says you,” Dean said, casting a wary look toward the scissors and forceps as Roman picked them up.

“Says me,” he agreed. “This is gonna pull, but it shouldn't actually hurt. You're gonna tell me if it does, yeah?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

He grasped the first suture with the forceps, clipped the edge as close to Dean's skin as possible, and pulled the loose end free on the other side of the cut. He dropped the spent fiber onto the scrap of gauze he'd put down for that purpose, and looked from the cut to the scrunched expression on Dean's face and back again. “Good?”

“Feels weird, but I'll live.” Dean twitched a little shrug.

He made quick work of the third and then fifth stitches in the line before Dean shifted, turning his head on the pillow to face away from him.

“Still okay?”

“Yup.” Dean nodded. “Keep going.”

He did pick up again, taking out every other stitch, pausing to check the closure of the gash after each. The skin was raised and pink, but holding together well, even as he reached the end of the line and went back to pull the even-numbered sutures. It'd probably still leave a gnarly scar, but it seemed to be healing up okay. "These are way better stitches than I was afraid they were going to be," he admitted.

"Like I said, they had a real, live medic there and everything," Dean said, his voice coming out thick.

"Almost like they knew somebody was going to end up sliced all to hell."

Dean's back stiffened at that: gearing up to defend his choices and himself against the helpless anger Roman hadn't meant to let slip into his tone. He made himself leave it at that and put the scissors down for a moment to rub a wordless apology into the back of Dean's neck before he continued along the line of stitches.

He worked methodically - clip, tug, discard, repeat - and tried to keep his touch light and clinical, but it was tougher than he'd thought it would be, staying detached when it was Dean's body under his hands, vulnerable and wounded. He hadn't realized how distracting every change in Dean's breathing would be, or how hard it would be to keep steady working on the cut when so much of him wanted to stop and rub comfort into the stiff line of his shoulders and bullshit with him until his voice lost the raw edge it had picked up and carried all day. Even so, he'd made it to the next to last suture, just reaching out to pinch it between the teeth of the forceps, when he felt Dean's shoulders jerk.

“You good?” While he watched, Dean shuddered again and swiped a fist across his eyes. Dean's forearm came to rest against his cheek, obscuring even the partial view Roman had had of his face, and he realized that what he'd taken as a flinch was instead maybe a sob, barely held in.

“'m fine,” he whispered, and breathed out slow and deliberate and nodded without turning to face him. “Finish it.”

He waited a beat to be sure that Dean would be able to keep himself still for the moment it would take to sever and remove the suture – the last thing he wanted was for an unpredictable movement to leave him with a fresh wound, or a chance for the old ones to fester – then made quick work of the final two. He put the tools aside and looked carefully at the slice once more, then smeared a thin layer of ointment down its length, aware the whole while of how tense Dean had gone under his hands, taut with the effort of holding himself together.

He wanted to put a couple of butterfly bandages in place around the cut to give the healed edges a little support and though he tried to work fast, by the time he'd secured the last sticky tab to his skin, Dean was trembling. His face was still tucked into the space between the pillow and his arm, one white-knuckled fist curled next to his temple.

Roman tipped forward far enough to cover that fist with his own hand with a light squeeze and press a dry kiss against Dean's shoulder blade, a little to the left of the butterflies. He heard Dean's breath hitch again, and let go of his hand long enough to round the foot of the bed and climb in the other side.

He propped himself up next to Dean's hunched shape and said, “Hey,” soft and uncertain. He felt a little useless, now that Dean was all patched up and curled in on himself protectively.

Dean didn't answer, except to shift just far enough to bury his face against his chest, his breath coming in uncontrolled gasps, harsh and hot and damp through his tanktop. Dean was still twisted up on the mattress with a pillow crushed to his own chest, which made for an awkward position, but he got one arm around his shaking shoulders and a hand against the back of his head and just held on.

It didn't last long, Dean letting himself go like that, but he did let himself be held for a while even after his breathing had steadied and his tremors stilled. Too worn out, probably, to squirm out from under the fingers Roman scratched through his unruly hair. Whatever the reason, Roman wasn't going to be the one to break the spell if he could help it.

“Sorry,” Dean said eventually, the word almost quiet enough to be lost between them, except for the soft huff of breath and brush of his lips over Roman's heart that came with it.

There were a lot of things he could have said – wanted to say – to that: _sorry for what?_ and _you're allowed to feel all of this_ and _you're not alone_ and _you deserve to be taken care of_ and _I love you, brother_. But Dean was still tucked against him, undeniably tough and unbearably breakable, and all he managed was a hoarse, “You got no apologies to make here.”


End file.
